Commercial NAS Operating Systems - A Comprehensive Overview of Core Features
by Ganesh T S on November 14, 2016 8:30 AM ESTSetting the Stage...
As we draw the first part of our comprehensive coverage of commercial NAS operating systems to a close, it is important to touch upon one additional core aspect. The setting up of multiple users, user groups, joining domains etc., LDAP or NIS authentication etc. are very important for business NAS units, but, not so much for NAS units targeting the home market.
Since the COTS NAS operating systems are all based on Linux, adopting the standard user / group strategy is not very difficult for the vendors. ZyXEL, as expected due to their targeting of home users, has only very basic user and group settings with quota support. Western Digital goes a bit further by allowing for multiple users to be created at the same time. Asustor, QNAP, and Synology have that feature and much more too. For example, Synology even supports 2-factor authentication for certain groups. Netgear does support some advanced features like Active Directory, but there are lots of things that Netgear could learn from the aforementioned vendors.
Today's piece dealt with the core aspects of NAS operating systems - storage and how it is configured, the user interface, setting up of the desired services and shared folders, and the configuration of the network links. Even though the coverage has been very subjective, there are some clear areas for each vendor to improve.
Asustor, QNAP and Synology have the setup process nailed down to a decent extent. However, Netgear needs to make its ReadyCLOUD process more robust. Alternatively, the RAIDar program should be fixed to avoid Java requirements. Western Digital's approach is almost perfect, given that they mostly sell systems with disks pre-installed. However, it would be good if a volume is created by default when the My Cloud OS is installed. ZyXEL's approach is passable, but the slow web UI leads to an unsatisfactory UX.
On the storage and services side, Synology and QNAP turn out to very feature-rich, followed closely by Asustor. Netgear still has some catching up to do as certain aspects like advanced SMB options still require an external package to be installed.
In terms of networking features, QNAP is very much on top. While all vendors have some sort of teaming implementation, QNAP has gone beyond that and started to implement various network modes that can really take advantage of the multiple LAN ports.
Next week, we will have a follow-up article that deals with value-add features. These include media services, surveillance (DVR for IP cameras) solutions, and the public cloud (integration with Dropbox, Google Drive etc.). We will also discuss support for virtualization - in terms of being a datastore, as well as the NAS being a host for guest VMs. A look at some of the third-party applications and the usage models that they enable will round up our comprehensive coverage of NAS operating systems.
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ZeDestructor - Monday, November 21, 2016 - link
Ubuntu shipped ZFS + Linux in April 2016. There was no lawsuit, although the FSF was more than happy to bitch about it.On top of that, LLNL and various other have been using ZFS on Linux for years now, with no issues. So calm your tit's, it'll be fine.
tuxRoller - Friday, November 25, 2016 - link
Canonical is based in what country?What's that country's history of corporate litigation?
Besides, Canonical isn't exactly overflowing with assets.
Solandri - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
If you're going to roll your own, some type of microserver is the way to go. An old desktop off Craigslist isn't going to have ECC memory, and will burn enough Wattage that it'll cost about $50-$100 more per year to keep it powered on 24/7. I stopped counting the number of people I've had to talk out of turning their old desktop into a file server. Most did not realize that the extra electricity they'd pay for would exceed the cost of a dedicated low-power NAS/file server in a few years.DominionSeraph - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
Anything Intel from Lynnfield on sips power. Pulling a DL380 G5 off ebay wouldn't be a good idea, but you can get Sandy i3's and i5's for nothing.BedfordTim - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
The big advantage of your approach is when something goes wrong. You can have another HP/Dell micro server on site the next day. Likewise the Dell equivalent. If a NAS goes wrong you will be without your data for days or weeks.Beany2013 - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link
Eh, kinda sorta.If you have a consumer NAS, and it just *dies* (IE PSU pops or similar 'fatal' error - yeah, i know, you can get replacement PSUs but bear with me here) most of them will allow you to buy another chassis of the same model, and just move the disks.
Or, if you used a bit of common sense, you can take the backup that you made - you did make a backup, yeah? - and just restore it to a new unit.
It's not *quite* as efficient as having a Microserver etc with NBD warranty, but if you are moderately cash rich (IE have a credit card you can drop a grand on without fussing too much) then it's entirely possible to do.
The other big, big bonus of these platforms is that if you're a small company that lacks serious IT chops, these devices give you stupid;y good featuresets with fairly straightforward setup.
Got a used quad CPU server and want to set up a test environment? You can have iSCSI set up on one of these units in minutes. Try that with a straight debian box, or even something like TrueNAS; your average IT generalist or hobbyist will be, er, a bit longer than that.
So it's horses for courses. I use a few Synos to run my companies backup strategy as they're plenty reliable enough, they fail over to each other nicely, and they're easy enough to use that if I get knocked down by a bus, using them doesn't require solid Linux/Windows server knowledge.
that said, my DS214 at home is getting a bit long in the tooth, and a large chassis, modest server-oriented mobo and a used Xeon and some ECC RAM is a tempting idea; I could then use the Syno as a backup target....
bsd228 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I have 3 microservers (36, 40, 54) and one Qnap (451). The price on all of these, upgraded to 8 or 16gb memory, second intel NIC added - not very far apart. (Got the Qnap on a sale for 330 for the base box). With the MSs, I can run solaris and ECC and get ZFS, but need to run VMs (Virtualbox) to have Linux sessions that have all of the useful media sharing stuff like plex, mediatomb, mt-daapd, etc. It also has a 5th sata connection (intended for optical) with the hacked bios, so I could add an SSD for L2ARC and/or ZIL. It's more work than it was worth for me to do this within the native Solaris parent, though I do like having current zfs.The QNAP is smaller, quieter, takes less space, and will even allow the VM if I want it. I have a hard time recommending the DIY route for the 4 bay unit.
But if you want to go to the 8 drive class, the typical pricing for qnap or synology makes you look at a nice Fractal Design case and an i3 or Xeon proc. The pain point, if you wanted Oracle Solaris, was support for the GPU, the NIC, the chipset. I stuck with AMD chips a long time because Sandy Bridge support came slowly. This included freeNAS at the time.
Ananke - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
There are $200-250 brand new Lenovo, HP or Dell microservers, deals on Newegg every other day. Another $80-100 retail price of Win 10, which can be legally obtained for less btw, gives you Storage Pools.The biggest advantage of Win Storage Pools is the easy migration - if your system fails, you simply pull the HDD stack and plug in a new system - no down time, no data loss, zero effort.
Besides, am not even adding all the network connection advantage that Win environment gives you, and the fully functional GUI OS taht can be used for anything else, besides serving data.
doggface - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
1. I assume for storage pools you need pro. Which is $200.2. FreeNas and the like are free.
3. Why waste compute and Ram resources on a gui?
4. Windows is possibly the worst route for a Nas.
mervincm - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
multichannel SMB3 is another huge advantage none of other offer options have. Everyone talks chaneel bonding, thinking it will give you multi gigabit path between a system and the server. only windows given you that today (unless you are willing to run experimental features in samba)